The Teacher as Network Weaver

The other day, during my morning-drive-to-work ritual, I was listening to NPR’s “The Take Away”. The topic was: “College Students Either Studying as Hard as Ever, or Not Hard Enough.” It was based on a series of studies that seem to have found that college students today study 40% less than their counterparts in 1961. As I listened, I couldn’t help but remember what studying for me was like in the mid-1970s. If I was researching a paper, I had to go to the library, find the appropriate abstract that contained a resource that I MIGHT be able to use; write down on a note card the inscrutable code that pointed the way to the journal or book in the cavernous “stacks”; take the elevator (or stairs, more likely) to the appropriate floor and search for my prize. Once I found the volume or tome, I had to find a copy machine, make sure I had enough quarters, and photocopy the article or portion of the book. Only then could I start taking notes and highlighting text. This was “studying”. It has nothing to do with the way we research or teach our students today, in the 21^st century. What studying was 50 years ago is not what it is today. What took hours in the last century now takes minutes. That changes everything.

We can define how students learn using concepts like literacies or fluencies (I wrote about his here) or categorize them using the “4 C’s model of learning”: Collaboration, Creativity, Communication, Critical Thinking – but however we do it, we understand that kids learn differently. The act of “studying” has changed. This means that we need to adapt the way we teach to the new reality, establishing different sets of expectations. It isn’t news that the role of the teacher is undergoing a paradigm shift. We, as educators need to wrap our crowdsourcing minds around this and reimagine how teaching is evolving.

Two of the “4C’s” intrigue me: Collaboration and Communication. In the past, learning may have been something like solitary confinement: We did our work (“studied”) alone and presented our product (the assignment) to our teacher. Rarely did we share our work with our peers or our parents. Today, studying is public. It’s a group event. It’s not based just on how I do my “job”, but how we as a group relate to one another so that we can achieve a goal. Project Based Learning is the newest iteration of this idea. When we study and teach, we do this in relation to one another and to the content. We are creating a learning network that is all encompassing. So maybe, the role of educator is being transformed into that of a “network weaver’.

A teacher no longer simply provides content, standing in front of the classroom. The educator helps the students develop the skills they need, to explore content on their own, developing their own understandings, using the means that work best for them. A teacher is a curator of knowledge, pointing the way. Today’s teacher helps students learn how to wade through all the resources available to them, developing the skill to discern what is valuable and what is trash. Howard Rheingold calls this “Crap Detection”. But more than that, as Deborah Fishman wrote here: “…successful network-weavers don’t only curate information, contacts, and other resources. They also seek ways to apply the lessons learned from one part of the network to other parts of the network.” In the classroom this means that the teacher helps the network or networks of students learn how to collaborate creatively, how to communicate effectively. Rather than working in isolation, students are working together, and learning from one another. The teacher navigates between these individuals and groups, guiding them, weaving these disparate strands that are the students into a fabric that is made up of communal knowledge.

One of my favorite quotes from Abraham Joshua Heschel is this: “What we need more than anything else is not textbooks but text people”. Learning is based on relationships. It’s up to the teacher to weave those networks so that learning creates new possibilities in the lives of students.

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Peter Eckstein began his career a Jewish educator in 1982 on Kibbutz Ketura, working with children of all ages and serving as the kibbutz Education Coordinator. In 1993 upon returning to the U.S. he became the Director of Education and Programming at Temple Israel in West Palm Beach. Currently he is the Director of Congregational Learning at Temple Beth David in Palm Beach Gardens. In addition, serves as the Technology Integration Educator for the Friedman Commission for Jewish Education.He was very active with the Coalition for the Advancement of Jewish Education as programming co-chair, Shabbat chair and conference chair for several conferences. He has taught professional development for educators, Judaic adult education classes, and the Palm Beach County’s “Introduction to Judaism” course for those seeking to become part of the community. He is specializing in teaching educators how to integrate Education Technology into the Jewish classroom. He has also served on the faculty at URJ Camp Coleman as an informal Jewish educator.Peter is fascinated by how technology and experiential education will aid in the transmission of Jewish awareness to the next generations

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